They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

~Louise O’Neill, Asking For It

I’ve read many criticisms of the graphic portrayal of suicide in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. I’ve seen posts and articles railing against the “irresponsibility” of Netflix to “glorify” suicide and countless comments from mental health professionals (i.e. my colleagues) about how now there will be an epidemic of suicides across the country and how the show doesn’t once mention mental illness as the “real” cause of suicide and other towing the line statements and declarations.

With every criticism, particularly from therapists, social workers and psychologists, I became more and more irritated. I disagree with there stance and opinions, yes, but my reaction was more visceral, more intense than a simple professional differing of opinion. I was furious. I was rolling my eyes. And at one point with one discussion I was literally shaking.

It took a conversation with my own therapist, being in a space to talk without interruption or needing to defend my opinion and reaction, to understand why so much rage was coming up with these comments and “professional statements”.

Where I came to was this:: Not a SINGLE therapist or counselor mentioned in any way, shape, or form the depiction of rape culture and how it contributed to Hannah’s suicide.

Not one.

No where.

(I did find a single site when researching for this article originally, written by a therapist, talking about depiction of rape culture in the show.)

As I continued talking in my session, I realized how I believe many mental health professionals miss the mark when it comes to discussing topics like anxiety, depression, and suicide and their root causes. How they ignore the impacts living in this culture has on all of us. How the interconnections and intersections of our own lived experiences, our culture, and our ancestral history affect us. How living in a culture where women and girls are only seen as valuable when it comes to the male gaze. How sexual assault and harassment take their toll on our mental and physical health – DAILY – whether we have personally experienced either or now. How witnessing rape and or being raped impact us to the point of considering and for some attempting suicide (According to the National Center for PTSD, it’s estimated that one in three women who have been raped contemplate suicide, and one in 10 victims attempt it.) How culturally it is more important to us to protect rapists than the person who was raped. (Remember how Brock Turner received an incredibly lenient sentence because the (white male) judge didn’t want to impact Brock’s precious future?)

These are not discussions we typically have within the mental health community. It is only in recent years that any discussion of how our greater environment (including our culture and ancestral history) impacts our mental health. We, mental health professionals, seem to want to pretend that a person lives in a vacuum and that our mental health has nothing to do with our daily lives or outside forces. That it is all in our heads. And while there is acknowledgement that childhood experiences can and do impact our mental health, we don’t talk about the systems that create and allow those experiences to exist and how they impact us and compound things.

I’ve said it before and will say it many times more:: We live in a culture that hates women.

And frankly the professional “outcry” (and absolute lack of outcry in regard to rape culture) around this Netflix series only emphasizes this truth.

If we (mental health professionals) think for one moment that living a world where we (girls and women) are considered less than human, where we are unable to earn an equal wage, where what we wear and where we choose to walk or socialize are up for dissection when we are assaulted raped, where our bodies are mentally dissected and compared and contrasted with others… if we think for one moment that none of this impacts our mental (and physical) health, then we should absolutely give up our licenses and find another line of work.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we doing far more harm than good.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being complicit to a culture that causes great harm.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being compliant and doing harm to our clients, friends, and family members ourselves under the guise of being “professionals” and “authorities”.

Rape culture is real. It is part of this world each of us lives in. It impacts all of us, in varying degrees. It causes harm. It can cause depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts.

These are facts.

And.

Those who experience rape and sexual assault (in any or all its forms from being touched without consent to being placed on a “Hot or Not” list to having rumors spread about us) are not the only ones who are victimized by this culture either.

The people who perpetrate the rapes and assaults are victims too.

Because they are given the message, over and over and over again, that it is acceptable to objectify women and girls. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that no doesn’t really mean no. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that it is perfectly acceptable to take what they want, no matter what. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that they will not be punished for their crimes. Because toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with rape culture.

I am not saying that rapists and abusers are not responsible for their actions. They absolutely are. AND. They are also pawns in a system that subjugates women to a role of only being as valuable as the male we are attached to.

Bryce (the rapist in the series for those of you who have not watched it) is a victim. Not in the oh-the-poor-boy-and-his-future-Brock-Turner way. Rather in the way that he lives in a world that says there is nothing wrong with what he has done or continues to do. Because he was not taught about consent and boundaries from an early age. Because he was not taught that silence DOES NOT MEAN COMPLIANCE. Because he was protected and defended by many different peers. Yes, he is responsible for his actions, as is every rapist and abuser, and we are responsible, due to our own compliance and complicity in this culture, for his actions too.

I am irritated (again) with my profession. I am irritated with the “outcry” that has been targeted against this show (and also the lack of outcry). I am irritated at my profession for not addressing rape culture. I am irritated at the world for not supporting victims and instead re-victimizing and victim-blaming them over and over and over again.

She shouldn’t have gone to that party.

She shouldn’t have gotten in the hot tub in her underwear.

She shouldn’t have drank so much.

She shouldn’t have worn that.

She shouldn’t have had her hair that way.

She shouldn’t have talked to him.

She shouldn’t have expected to NOT be raped.

She shouldn’t have expected anyone to stand up and speak up for her.

She had mental health issues.

It was all her own fault.

It was meant as a compliment.

She’s being too sensitive.

What a bitch.

She was asking for it.

If you won’t give his name, you just have to deal with it.

Are you sure that is what happened?

Fuck. All. Of. That.

It is time that we as a culture start to name these behaviors and insinuations for what they are:: complicity in rape culture. It is time we stop victim blaming and gas lighting. It is time that we stop avoiding difficult conversations, including our own compliance and complicity in a culture that harms other humans.

It is time my profession pull its collective head out of its collective ass.

It is time we begin to understand how living in this culture impacts us, especially women, people of color, the LGBTQi community, the differently abled, those who live or have lived in poverty… the list could go on and on. It is time we stop blaming victims and gas lighting our clients. It is time we begin to understand how deep the wounds and scars of cultural and ancestral trauma run.

It is time we stop causing the harm ourselves.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

xoox

This essay was originally shared in my weekly love letter on May 6, 2017. If you’d like to read more essays where I breathe fire and talk about the intersections of the personal and political, the social and singular, the communal and individual, you can sign up right here.

Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other. The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.

~Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

The other day I googled “mother daughter relationships” just to see what would pop up. Unsurprisingly there were pages and pages of How to Fix Your Mother Daughter Relationship types articles with some Signs Of A Toxic Mother Daughter Relationship pieces mixed in. The truth that mother-daughter relationships tend to be challenging is relatively well known, at least to any women who have mothers, which is, well, all of us.

My own relationship with my mother was traumatizing at its worst and complicated at it’s best. She was both physically and psychologically abusive during my childhood. There was abuse yes and there was also neglect, and these formative years have had their impact on me, for sure.

When I was fifteen my mother got involved in the then popular “Tough Love” movement and by the time I turned 17 she stopped talking to me. Her silence lasted for six years, and I know it only ended because of the pressure my grandmother (her mother) put on her to make amends.

We spent the next decade plus trying to find our way together. My mother did apologize for the abuse she inflicted on me and to her credit she truly did work hard to repair our relationship. In truth it was only after the birth of my own daughter that I began to truly forgive my mom and understand the challenges and hardships of what it means to be a parent. For the fourteen months immediately after the birth of my daughter our relationship did deepen in ways I would have never thought possible.

And then she went out of remission, the cancer she had fought mostly on her own five years prior came back and all too soon she died.

There is more to the story of course than what I have written here. There always is.

I grew up never knowing if my mother loved me or even wanted me. And then when my own daughter was born I knew that she did, she always had, and she simply didn’t have the tools or support to be the mother I needed let alone the mother she actually wanted to be.

This is not to make excuses or to minimize my own pain and trauma. Rather it is a statement of facts. Facts that took a very long time for me to see or understand.

My relationship with my mother of course informs my relationship with my daughter today. From the beginning of my daughter’s life I knew exactly what I never wanted to do but didn’t always know what I did want to do or rather, how to do it. Throughout her almost ten years the young woman born from my womb has given me lessons and pushed me and expanded me and healed me in ways I never knew possible. And, thankfully, so deeply gratefully, I am in a place where I can receive those lessons, where I can learn and stumble and make mistakes and make amends and do everything I can to do different the next time.

I think if my mother would have had a husband who was actually supportive or had the support instead of the ridicule of her own mother she would have done the same – she would have fought for us and our relationship from the beginning. But that was not our reality, it was not to be our experience as mother and daughter.

And so I have taken those painful lessons and apply them as best I can today.

This work of unraveling the pain and trauma of my own relationship with my own mother and trying to create a different paradigm with my daughter, has lead to a deeper understanding of how our culture does not support women, and perhaps especially mothers. I have learned about intergenerational trauma and the wounding that is passed down generation after generation, both in our DNA and through the ways we relate with our mothers and they with us (and in turn the way we relate with our own daughters).

What I have come to realize is that the strife and frustration and trauma of the mother daughter relationship is both an act of survival and an act of oppression. In understanding how our own mothers, and their mothers, and theirs, and theirs, and so back several thousand years, were disregarded and dehumanized and in understanding what they, our feminine ancestors, had to do to not only insure their own survival but also the survival of their daughters, it is clear that this wounding that is passed down – from physical abuse to psychological abuse to all in between and beyond – was a way of trying to keep the daughters in-line so they would survive. This is something that scholars call the “Patriarchal Bargain” – what we give up for a sense of safety; what our mothers gave up and what they taught us to give up.

And while our mothers are responsible for their actions and inaction, they were also pawns and victims in how our misogynist culture seeks to isolate and dis-empower us as women.

We live in a culture that is terrified of women. This terror shows up as hatred. It shows up in the fact that we are paid a lessor wage. It shows up in the ways we are told over and over that we don’t know or understand our own bodies. It shows up in the ways it tells us over and over that women are untrustworthy, are manipulative, are sinful, are evil.

One of the most powerful messages our culture gives us are the ones about how women are untrustworthy. These messages show up in our media, through the encouragement of “mean girl” behavior, through the very facts that our own mothers in many ways betrayed us to a culture that hates us (as did their mothers, and their mothers, etc), in the ways we encourage competition and have a cultural scarcity complex (there isn’t enough for everyone so you’d best step on everyone else to make sure you get yours).

This message isolates us. It isolates us from our mothers and our daughters. It isolates us from our sisters and our aunties.

And in this isolation we lose not only relationships with other women, we lose our relationship with our Self.

Our mothers and grandmothers treated their daughters the way they did because of a deep trauma and thousands year old fear of what will happen when their girl-child goes out into the world. The knowledge and fear of how women are raped and beaten and murdered by the men who claim to love them. The knowledge and fear that we are not only not safe out on the streets or at a bar or at a party alone, we aren’t safe in our own homes. The knowledge and fear that statistically speaking the pains and secrets of their own lived experiences will also be pains experienced by their daughters.

I talk even more about the complexity and intricacy of mother-daughter relationships in this 20-minute video below. I hope you enjoy it.

The last few weeks have been interesting. An admitted sexual predator took the White House. We have seen blatant attempts at gaslighting by the White House press secretary. Hundreds of thousands of women ACROSS THE GLOBE on ALL seven continents marched for women’s rights. And then all the executive orders that have been flying at us, including a ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries. And during all of this I have been checking in with various feminist spaces, connecting and witnessing and observing.

I have witnessed both curious and beautiful discussion and learning as well as shaming and silencing.

I have watched people give advice or their opinions when it wasn’t asked for.

I have watched boundaries being crossed and consent being disregarded.

I have watched people clam up and/or get defensive and go on attack.

I have watched as some express their valid pain and rage and frustration.

And some of this has been online and some of it in person and some of it between adults and some of it with my children as they work out their own relationship of mutual respect and consent.

And where I’m landing in this moment, is we all have a lot of work to do.

And yes I mean the macro work of calling representatives and getting our hands and minds and bodies busy volunteering and doing the work of resisting and disrupting this new administration at every turn.

And I also mean we all, and I do mean WE ALL and I am most definitely including myself in this, have a lot of inner work still to do too.

We need to look at our own internalized misogyny.

We need to look at all our implicit biases.

We need to examine the ways each of us have silenced or shamed or gaslighted another, whether it was intentional or conscious or not.

We need to build our resilience.

We need to have a deep and clear and embodied understanding of consent and boundaries.

And we need to learn to sit in discomfort and know we’ll all live if we make a mistake or turn out to be in the wrong in some way.

We each have a lot of unlearning and relearning to do.

There are many, many ways to do this learning.

And I find one of the best ways to do this learning and unlearning is in community. With others who are also stumbling and finding their way in the unraveling and exploring and dismantling and dislodging.

In community where we can be witnessed and supported.

In community where we can be lovingly pushed outside our own comfort zones.

In community where we can make mistakes without risk of being shamed or ridiculed.

In community where we can connect with each other and see we are very much not alone.

I believe in the power of the community. It is why most of my work is in the form of circles and groups. There is magic that happens when people come together to dig deep, to find support, to be witness to others. Something greater than the sum of each of the individuals is born. And it is amazing to be a part of and witness to.

I invite you to find your brave communities. The ones where you will be both held and lovingly pushed. The ones where you can sit in discomfort. The ones where you can bear witness to the pain and struggles of others. The ones where “negative emotions” aren’t dismissed or banned. The ones where you can both be you just as you are and also learn to do and be different.

We all need these communities. And sometimes our communities will stumble. These are growing pains and we all come out of isolation and learn to be together again. These are the growing pains of taking off our patriarchal leashes. These are the growing pains of revolution and burning it down and building something new and different and better.

xoox

If you would like to join me in community, I have four circles that will be starting in March::

On March 1 Isabel Faith Abbott and I and others will gather together in circle to explore specifically the ideas of consent and boundaries. We will look at trauma and resilience. We will unravel stories and dislodge some of our conditioning of how we are “allowed” to be from our bodies and being. We will heal some of our wounds. And while I can’t tell you how this work will change you or how you will be different at the end of our six months together, I can tell you that shifting and unlearning and dismantling will happen – perhaps in big ways and perhaps in small. You can learn more and register right here: http://gwynnraimondi.com/bodyofconsent

Also on March 1 a group of us will gather to explore our relationships with other women (including our mothers and grandmothers) and how our patriarchal wounding and conditioning has informed and affected these relationships. We will be together for nine months, going deep, looking at intergenerational trauma, healing wounds, and connecting to our strengths. You can learn more and request an application at http://gwynnraimondi.com/unleashingourself

On March 3 my six week in-person women’s circle workshop on self care will begin. We’ll be learning and practicing how to soothe our nervous systems, embody our boundaries, and process and sit in uncomfortable emotions and sensations. It will be on Friday evenings from 7-9pm at Cunning Crow Apothecary in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. If you’d like to learn more and register go to: http://gwynnraimondi.com/rebellionselfcare

And on March 15th we will gather for my six month on-line women’s circle on self care for resistors, disruptors and fire breathers. We will also be learning and practicing how to soothe our nervous systems, embody our boundaries, and process and sit in uncomfortable emotions and sensations. To learn more and register go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/selfcarerevolution

On a good day, at our most stable mentally, emotionally, and physically, consent is a complex topic. And when we add in the realities of the stress of our day to day lives, the impact of trauma, and the truth of living in a misogynist patriarchal culture… well the topic of consent can become mind boggling to say the least.

Often we think of consent in very dualistic terms: either it is yes or no, it is given or not given. Yet life isn’t so simplistic as that neither is our consent. Our consent is a living entity that can shift and morph and change given any variety of circumstances. Add to this parts of us can give consent while other parts of us may not. This is often the case, for example, when we choose to have surgery, a surgery that may even be necessary for our survival. Our mind consents to this surgery and perhaps even our spirit, and yet all our body knows is that it is frozen (thanks to anesthesia) being cut open and likely having metal implements stuck inside it and pieces of it, our body, being torn away and taken out. And so, even after having given consent with our mind and spirit, our body may have a trauma reaction post surgery, as a response to what it just went through and doesn’t understand was okay.

For these reasons, the very complexity of consent, it can be challenging to fully understand it. When we add to this that we are raised in a culture that tells women our consent isn’t relevant, it is no wonder that we are often left wondering if we didn’t indeed ask for it or feeling like it doesn’t matter if we say no so why bother?

And yet.

The truth is that our bodies, our beings, our minds, our spirits are OURS, and ours alone. These bodies we each walk around it, these bodies we live and love and grieve and rejoice in, are our birthright. And as such it is our right to say yes or no or maybe or to change our minds a million times in the process.

Yet often we are so disconnected from what we want, from our boundaries, from our bodies that we don’t fully understand what consent even means on any given day.

This disconnection isn’t by accident or any sort of indication of our own character. This disconnection is by design. It is intentional. It is the way our culture controls us, keeps us obedient, compliant and complicit. It is how the patriarchy gets away with treating us as less than human, as objects.

And so. I deeply believe that part of our own journey to understanding our consent is coming home to our body. To moving from a place of disassociation to a place of embodiment. To learn to sit in the discomfort and pleasure of being present in our body, in each moment.

To learn how to be in our body so that then we can actually choose if we want to be in it or not. So we can have the power of decision. So we can be fully informed and take back our consent instead of having it taken from us.

I talk about consent even more in this 18-minute video below. I hope you enjoy it.

This essay and video series is in part to share with you the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Body of Consent. We begin on March 1 (the video says February, we changed the start date to March). If you are interested, you can learn more and register right over here. xoxo

We live in a culture that hates women. We grew up in this culture. We were raised in this culture.

As were our mothers.

And their mothers.

And their mothers.

And so on, back a few thousand years.

And since we are all still alive, what this means is that a long, long, long, LONG time ago, our female ancestors figured out how to survive. How to play the game. How to act the part. And in doing so, they bought not only their survival, but their daughters’ survival too.

And.

This playing the game and acting the part and all the rest of figuring out how to survive had its costs.

It meant disconnecting. From their own bodies. From ancient traditions and rituals and ways of being and knowing. From other women. And even from their own mothers and daughters.

This disconnection brought survival, yes. And it meant our ancient mothers taught and trained their own daughters how to survive. How to disconnect. How to play the game and act the part.

And all this disconnection also meant a severing from the Self. From embodiment. From innate wisdom and knowing.

And this severing and disconnection was wounding. To the psyche and the body and the spirit. To relationships with self and others. And to society and culture and humankind.

These wounds are often called the “Mother Wounds.” I kinda hate that term. I find it to be a distraction. Because while the wounding is partially passed down mother to daughter, the Truth is, that this wounding is passed down by our patriarchal culture. It is passed down by men and women, by fathers and mothers, by the media, by the systems that are meant to keep us in our place and compliant and complicit and obedient.

So, I call these wounds Patriarchal Wounds. Because, that’s what they are. And our mothers and their mothers and their mothers and so on back a few thousand years all had them too.

Some of these wounds were and are physical scars from mutilation or abuse or rape. Some of these wounds were and are psychological from being gaslighted and demeaned and devalued and labeled as less than (human). Some of these wounds are spiritual as religions washed away the goddesses and their stories and rewrote spiritual history so that male gods gave birth to the earth.

All of us have these wounds. And we have internalized the messages that come with this wounding.

That women are evil and can’t be trusted.

That we aren’t good enough at anything.

That we are way too much and take up too much space and air and thought.

That we have no value or worth and make not positive contributions to this world.

And while all these messages have burrowed into our skin and muscle and sinew and being… and while they did the same with our mothers and their mothers and their mothers back a few thousand years… and while at times it seems a losing battle to fight this culture and its hatred of women…

Fight we must.

Resist we must.

Disrupt we must.

Unravel and dislodge and destroy and create new, we must.

Because our daughters deserve better.

Because our nieces deserve better.

Because our sons and nephews and brothers and husbands deserve better.

Because WE deserve better.

xoxo

I am offering a six month circle of unearthing, unraveling, exploring, examining, disrupting, dislodging, destroying and creating new. Nine months of looking at these wounds and how they have been passed down and how we can apply salve and heal them. So we can do and be different than our mothers and their mothers and their mothers back a few thousand years. So our daughters and nieces and sons and nephews don’t need to heal as much. So we can stop the passing down of these wounds. So we can connect – to our daughters, our mothers, our Self.